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I wanted to know what they were experiencing, and why to us they feel so compelling, and so-close. This time I allowed myself to ask them the question that for a scientist was forbidden fruit: Who are you?

Weaving decades of field observations with exciting new discoveries about the brain, Carl Safina's landmark book offers an intimate view of animal behavior to challenge the fixed boundary between humans and nonhuman animals. In Beyond Words, readers travel to Amboseli National Park in the threatened landscape of Kenya and witness struggling elephant families work out how to survive poaching and drought, then to Yellowstone National Park to observe wolves sort out the aftermath of one pack's personal tragedy, and finally plunge into the astonishingly peaceful society of killer whales living in the crystalline waters of the Pacific Northwest.

Beyond Words brings forth powerful and illuminating insight into the unique personalities of animals through extraordinary stories of animal joy, grief, jealousy, anger, and love. The similarity between human and nonhuman consciousness, self-awareness, and empathy calls us to re-evaluate how we interact with animals. Wise, passionate, and eye-opening at every turn, Beyond Words is ultimately a graceful examination of humanity's place in the world.

Carl Safina is author of six books, including Song for the Blue Ocean, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Eye of the Albatross, Voyage of the Turtle, and The View From Lazy Point. Safina is founding president of Blue Ocean Institute at Stony Brook University, where he also co-chairs the University's Center for Communicating Science.

His work has also been featured in The New York Times, and National Geographic and a new Foreword to Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us.

PART TWO: HOWLS OF WOLVES 137 Into the Pleistocene 139 A Perfect Wolf 143 Packing and Unpacking 151 The Wolf Named Six 160 A Shattering of Promises 167 In a Time of Truce 177 Magnificent Outcasts 183 Where the Wolf Birds Lead Us 191 Wolf Music 200 The Hunter Is a Lonely Heart 210 A Will to Live 216 Domestic Servants 221 Two Ends of the Same Leash 229